Alumni from the University of California Davis, both undergrads and graduate students, propelled the school to make both Top 100 lists of PitchBook’s annual university rankings of entrepreneur founders whose companies have raised venture capital.
Stanford University, University of California Berkeley and Harvard University are the top colleges for alumni raising VC money, according to a new report from venture capital data firm PitchBook, which compiled a list of the 100 top colleges internationally for startup founders.
UC Davis ranked 51st for undergrad venture funding and 69th for its graduate student alumni raising venture capital.
Anecdotally, the companies listed support the common conception that UC Davis grads get their degrees in the local college town and then go off to work and start companies in the Bay Area.
The 2022 rankings are based on the number of founders whose companies received a first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2012, and Oct. 21 this year.
UC Davis ranked 51st with $5.8 billion raised by its former students with undergraduate degrees. The top company started by an Aggie graduate is vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft company Joby Aviation Inc., based in Santa Cruz. Joby founder JoeBen Bevirt earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at UC Davis before going on to earn a master’s in mechanical engineering design at Stanford. Joby (NYSE: JOBY) is now a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $2.69 billion.
UC Davis ranked 69th in funding raised by its graduate students, with $7 billion raised. The largest raise was by Weee! Inc., a Fremont-based grocery delivery company specialized in Asian and Hispanic items. Larry Liu, the company's founder and CEO, earned an MBA at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.
Stanford-educated founders top both the undergraduate and graduate lists, with $73.6 billion and $166 billion, respectively.
Ten California universities made the undergrad list. Four California schools made the top 20, including Stanford, University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles and University of Southern California.
Seven schools in the University of California system made the top 100 undergrad list, including Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Davis, Irvine and Santa Cruz. The only school in the California State University system to make the undergrad list was California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
Six University of California system schools made the graduate list: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Irvine, Davis and Santa Barbara.
The top colleges for VC-funded alumni are on the coasts, but the data shows entrepreneurs attended colleges all over the country.
PitchBook's annual university rankings tally the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have founded venture capital-backed companies. The undergraduate and graduate rankings are based on PitchBook data and an analysis of more than 144,000 VC-backed founders.
